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Friday, 5 August 2016

Joy in remembrance of God

How does the company of holy persons help? How does it act? Holy persons have known the evanescence of worldly things and have also come to know that the only thing that is valuable, covetable, real and existing is God. Having known about it they are strenuously striving to realize it in their own lives by giving up all desires and by trying to keep constant remembrance of Him, in many ways. Sri Krishna voices their feelings thus: 'With their minds and senses given to Me, expounding about Me to one another, always speaking about Me, they spend their time in great joy.' It is not a morbid elation like that of the enjoyment of sense pleasures which as a reaction brings in great depression with the passing away of the moment that one feels in thinking of God. It is not stimulated by drugs. It spontaneously wells up from the heart. Its source is perennial, nay eternal.

A glance at a day's routine of Sri Ramakrishna as available to us in the written records, explains the veracity of the above statement of the Gita. It also explains the potential creativity of that bliss - a creativity far more beneficial to man than any he could think of giving effect to, viz. the unravelling of a new life, the opening of fresh vistas which were till then closed to his vision.

For Sri Ramakrishna there was neither day nor night. Every hour would bring on him a different divine mood. He had very little or no sleep at nights. With him the nights would pass away in samadhi. But whenever any devotees stayed with him he was careful to see that they did their spiritual practices regularly.

He would wake them up even at three o'clock in the morning and ask them to sit for meditation. In the small hours of the morning he would start chanting the names of God, totally immersed in His thought and utterly unaware of the surroundings as well as of his own body. For hours this would go on. Later in the day, if any devotees stayed with him he would talk on God and give them helpful instructions.

Activity : Observe how long in a day we could keep up in remembrance of God.